Nik's Saga

I've finally finished the A&S prize.

It's only small, but the embroidery design is based on some traditional Icelandic motifs (photos will appear after Revel). I've now got Mac embroidery design software - MacStitch, which works well enough but doesn't have the motif libraries that the Royal College of Needlework software has. One thing it does have, though, is a feature which allows you to save your design out as a web page, which is useful in that this includes a jpg of the pattern itself. That might be useful in future.

Other than that I'm just pottering around tidying up before Penny arrives on Monday. Once she's here everything's going to get quite hectic. So far I've done 5 of the 20 things I've written on my to-do list. That's not too bad, as I should get most of the rest done tomorrow.

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Sepp Blatter is absolutely right.

The head of FIFA has suggested that all clubs in the Champions League and the Uefa Cup should be limited to only five foreign players by the start of the 2012 season. Good for him! I've been saying that for years.

This may sound a little strange coming from a supporter of a team that takes great advantage of overseas talent at present, but if the home nations want any chance of success in the future then something has to be done about the ludicrous situation where three of the four semi-finalists in the Champions League are UK clubs but no UK national team has qualified for Euro 2008.

I'd go even further. I'd like to see a seven plus five rule - include the manager. I'm willing to keep Rafa plus four. :)

The only thing I think they have to be a little bit careful of is to make sure that all of the home nations are included in the definition of 'national' players. Five is a perfectly reasonable number; it's not as if we'd be going back to the 'bad old days' of the 1990s where only three overseas players were allowed. To hide behind the Treaty of Rome in order to keep such a flawed system as the current one merely serves to highlight that perhaps the Treaty of Rome is being pursued to its letter rather than its spirit.

There has also been some discussion recently about the minimal profits being made by the league overall, due entirely to the enormous salaries being paid to the international stars. This does suggest (to me, at least) that a limit on the expensive overseas players might have a positive impact on the overall balance sheet. Of course, the short-term readjustments would not please the many overseas owners of the top English clubs. Tough. If I had the cash to buy into the fan buyout offer for Liverpool I'd do so.
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Given that we had a bit of a shake earlier on I thought I'd just report in and let you know that I'm still here and still in one piece. :)

The 6.1 quake hit the Reykjavik area at about 15:45 local time. Very shortly thereafter it hit us here in Akureyri, about 140 miles to the north east. There was the rumbling sound I've come to associate with quakes - very much like an extremely heavy lorry driving by outside - and the appartment shook for a couple of seconds. It was certainly the strongest quake I've felt out here, probably over a 4 in the local area. There have been about a dozen aftershocks of 3 or more since the main quake but I haven't felt any of them this far away. What was particularly interesting was that as the quake hit I knew it wasn't a local quake. These come from the region to the east and hit the building from the right. This quake hit from behind me, and the difference in direction was quite pronounced.

There's no damage up here - most buildings are built to a minimum 7.5 spec, and I've heard that although nearer Reykjavík there were many cases of things falling off shelves, damage to some older buildings and some injuries but no fatalities. The phone network and internet went down for a few minutes but everything is back to normal now. The Met Office (who deal in weather, sea ice, volcanoes and earthquakes) have announced that there aren't likely to be any volcanic consequences as the quake was on one of the continental rift area rather than being in an active volcanic region (there is a difference). You can see all of the recent activity on their website - quakes within the last 4 hours are red, 4 to 8 hours are yellow and so on, and big green stars are for quakes larger than magnitude 3. I live in the section at the top with the four blue and yellow dots, so you can see it's quite quiet in my area.

So it was all very exciting, and a couple of other shire members and I went out for a post-earthquake celebratory ice-cream. It will be the talk of the nation for at least the next three weeks. Personally, though, I'm holding out for a decent volcanic eruption. :)

Labels: earthquakes

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One conference paper, extended.

The original paper (the one I gave at the conference in India) was limited to six pages. My co-author and I have now extended it into a journal paper, which has turned out at sixteen pages. Another table of results, more detail on the method and a lot more discussion. As a result I now know rather more about the Rogers innovation adoption curve than I did this morning. Having said that, anything is more than nothing. :) My next step is next month to revisit all of the websites I visited in December to see if there has been any change over the last six months. Then do it all again next December for the twelve month picture. And again for eighteen and twenty four months. Yes, I will have more primary data and will no doubt be quite sick and tired of these particular websites. Having said that, this time around I'll look out for a couple of extra elements to try to answer one or two of the questions our original paper has raised.

On the non-work front I've finally started the prize for the A&S competition. I'm quite pleased with the design as it incorporates a number of traditional Icelandic elements. I've done a couple of hours work on it tonight, and I suspect that there are several more evenings' work required. I hope to get it finished before Monday, so I foresee a marathon session on Sunday. :)
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I'm wondering what to do about fencing practices.

I have a group of fencers who've now been fencing weekly for about 9 months. This is good, as they're all now quite competent. My pondering, though, comes from the fact that some of them are far more interested in duelling than in technical niceties. They really don't care whether they fence in an identifiable period style, they just want to be able to wave a rapier about and try to kill people. Okay, no problem with that, I've seen enough of that in the SCA to know that it's not unusual.

There are others, though, who are interested in style and technique. Tonight we concentrated on using the cutting edge rather than the back of the blade in Spanish (and using electrical tape to distinguish between the two), which re-introduced a level of complexity that was clearly more interesting to some than to others. I'd covered all of this before, but over the last few months since folks got their own equipment we'd relaxed somewhat and had done rather more duelling than drilling as the majority just wanted to duel.

Ah well. I've just decided to console myself by moving the recent translation of Thibault from my Amazon wish-list into my basket and thence to the post. It should arrive just after Revel, so I shall spend my summer absorbing its contents.

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Other than make a veil.

One advantage of having built an armour tester is that I've now got several bits of fabric that I know meet SCA fencing armour requirements. This has meant that I've finally got around to making a veil to cover the back of my fencing mask rather than just putting the mask on over an armoured hood. This looks considerably better than the plain mask and is also going to help with the overheating issue - the hood gets very warm, very fast.

Now all I have to make is the collar to protect my neck (and go under my gorget) and I'm ready for anything. That will have to wait until tomorrow though, as my sewing machine is not neighbour-friendly after 22:00. It may be very good at stitching through heavy fabrics but it'll never win prizes for silent operation.
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I once more have a shower that does not require a pair of pliers in order to operate it.

This is definitely a Good Thing. Apart from anything else it means that I can actually control the temperature of the water again - as it was the hot knob that had gone, and as my geothermally heated hot water varies in temperature depending upon local geological activity, I couldn't work with the turn hot by 135 degrees and cold by 180 degrees to get ideal temperature approach. Having a shower used to mean fiddling with the knobs until the water reached an acceptable temperature although probably insufficient water pressure to be enjoyable. Now I have one control for water pressure and another control for temperature and can look forward to non-dribbly hot showers.

In the end J from next door did the actual deed. I was all ready to do it myself once he'd turned off the water, but I get the feeling that I actually had no chance of him letting me do it. Not through lack of plumbing skills, but more because I do technical support for his Vista machine, and Vista machines can be problematic at times. :)

The shower has now been fully tested. It was an absolute delight to be able to turn on one knob, wait for the water to heat up and then have a shower. To be able to adjust the water temperature with the other knob and then, joy of joys, to be able to turn the whole thing off without having to climb out of the bath, stand dripping on the floor, pick up the pliers and strain to turn the hot tap off and stop the drips... *happy sigh*

Okay, it's not perfect. It doesn't, for instance, have the water pressure you'd expect to find in the chief's (or pilot's) cabin on a Shell tanker (best showers in the world - power showers come nowhere close!). I'm willing, however, to make allowances for that just for the joy of having my newly-improved user interface. That and the knowledge that the sulphurous smell is because my hot water is heated by radioactivity and residual kinetic energy from the formation of the solar system which does make it pretty cool... in a non-temperature sort of way.
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It's been another busy 'making things' day.

As there's only a fortnight to go until Revel we had another A&S day today - at M's place rather than mine this time. I realised this morning that if I actually wanted to get the A&S prize done that I was going to have to get other things out of the way so that I wouldn't feel guilty about them. The result of this was that I spent three hours this morning before the meeting making fencing armour for A (shirt and hood). At some point I really must get around to making myself a veil to go over my mask so that I can stop using my hood; maybe tomorrow.

So I went off and did A&S things (just a bit of braiding stuff with Ö and H, some dressmaking stuff with R and M), ate strawberries, meringue and cream, then came home to start again. This time I finally made cards for my two sets of next-door neighbours, one set of which had their new baby christened today, while G graduated her midwifery course.

It's a bit tricky coming up with a secular christening card. Yes, I know those two words are diametrically opposed but I wanted to do a congratulatory card whilst avoiding the religious element. I almost succeeded - the design is neutral but I did resort to one of the poetic translations of St. Patrick's Breastplate for the inside.

The congratulatory card was much easier. Last summer I got three of the huge medallion stamps but hadn't got around to using any of them yet. This seemed a good opportunity to use one of them so I got creative with multiple card and ink colours and my decoupage dots. I'm quite pleased with the outcome; I think I'm going to enjoy using these stamps again.


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I'm still very tired here.

And I'm tired of being tired. I'm coming back in from work, falling asleep on the sofa and waking up in time to go to bed early. Tonight was A&S night, which I only attended because I'd bought a box of chocolate eclairs for it while doing the weekly shop earlier today. I don't even have the energy to be sitting in the cinema right now watching Indiana Jones. Maybe I'll go sometime next week... assuming I can psyche myself up not to be too annoyed by the intermission they'll stick at random somewhere in the middle of the film. Okay, so it must be expensive to get films up here and the cinemas need to recoup their costs in extra cola and popcorn sales, but it does ruin the flow of the film.

I think I've decided what to do as a demo entry in the A&S competition at Revel - my experimental plain coif. It's complex enough that I can demonstrate the basic documentation business, is completely handmade, and I can find photos of extant period pieces to justify its construction. I probably should make the headcloth to go with it, but that's not going to take long. It's also simple enough that I hope it will inspire people to say that's doesn't look too difficult/complicated, maybe I can enter things in A&S competitions after all. Then one day, once I've finished my silk-on-linen version, I might even enter it in an A&S competition somewhere else.
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Today I prepared to do some bathroom DIY.

Some time ago I tried to turn on the hot water for the shower and the knob came off in my hand. Drat. I tried to get a new knob, but it turned out that the tap was a strange size that had briefly been popular about 18 years ago but was no longer available. Drat again.

Eventually, then, I caved in and bought a new temperature-controlled mixer unit. The plan is to fit it on Sunday, after which I should no longer have to control the shower with a pair of pliers. That will be nice.
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Yes, I know it's only just after 9, but I'm heading for bed.

It's been a day requiring many spoons when I've only had a few spoons. Last night was busy but fun, as I had the daughter of some friends staying with me to make it easier to get to an early exam this morning. We sat last night eating ice cream Mars bars and watching Randall and Hopkirk Deceased and then Carry On Cleo before bed, then had an early start today.

So I ended up in work early and spent the day firefighting - again - which meant that by the time I was due to go to fencing practice I was too exhausted to do anything other than come home and fall asleep on the sofa. Since bed is more comfy I'm just going to relocate there, I think. Hopefully a good night's sleep will give me a bit more energy tomorrow.
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... Getting on with life.

Getting on with, in this case, meaning dragging myself into work and dealing with the aftermath of the exam results. There's always some aftermath - students who want to have a look at their papers to see where they've gone wrong, results which have gone missing in the post, that sort of thing. It'll probably continue for the next couple of days and then I can really get into the post-semester work - things like working out the teaching schedule for next year (not a trivial task, believe me).

All I really want to do is to curl up on the sofa until the stomach cramps go away. Not much chance of that though. :(
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From lack of interest and general bleughness. I had planned to do all sorts of things but woke up feeling bleugh and fell asleep again on the sofa. I did eventually stir myself to make a kirtle for B and work out how to design spiral braids, but nothing particularly effective.
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What was going to be a quiet afternoon making day garb for B turned into a rather larger A&S session.

This was not a problem, as I'd had a suspicion it might do just that, so I baked a gala pie, to be served with salad, cottage cheese and pringles. This proved quite a success, although is definitely a little on the heavy side... but that's normal for pork pies. I think that under normal circumstances it would probably feed 12 people.

This was the first time I'd made a hot water crust. The process isn't particularly complicated, but the rolling out of the pastry was a real pain. It just didn't want to stay flattened and I eventually had to piece the pie crust together from sections of the awkward mass. That said, once baked the pastry was delicious.

Gala Pie
Serves 12

Ingredients
For the pastry:
450g flour
50ml whole milk
50ml warm water
150g lard, chopped
Salt and pepper
1 egg yolk, beaten

For the filling:
450g pork mince
150g smoked streaky bacon
1 tbsp sage
1 tbsp parsley
Salt and pepper
4 eggs

Instructions

1. Pre-heat oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4, and while the oven is heating up hard-boil the eggs, cool in cold water and de-shell. Grease and flour a 25cm long loaf tin.
   
2. Place the pork, bacon, sage, parsley, salt and pepper in a food processor and process until the bacon is chopped and the ingredients are well mixed.
   
3. Sift the flour into a large bowl and add the salt and pepper
   
4. Put the milk, water and lard into a pan and heat until the lard melts then bring the mixture to the boil. Carefully pour it onto the flour and mix together with a spoon.
   
5. Once it is cool enough to handle, knead for several minutes before rolling out on a floured surface. Roll it out while still warm and use three-quarters to line the loaf tin, reserving the remaining dough to form the lid.
   
6. Place a layer of the meat mixture in the bottom of the pie, then place the hard-boiled eggs on top. Fill around and over the eggs with the rest of the meat mixture.
   
7. Brush the top edges of the sides with water, then add the pastry lid, pressing the pastry tightly closed. Brush the top of the pie with the beaten egg yolk.
   
8. Cook in the centre of the oven for approximately 45 minutes before removing and turning out onto a wire tray to cool.

And, because I know you demand them, photos of the finished item:



Folks seemed quite happy with it, although I think it's a bit too meaty, just like the sausages. I clearly still have a lot to learn about getting the classic British banger/pie texture right.

Labels: reciepes

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And I think that there may be some celebratory shouting in certain quarters.

The semester is now, to all intents and purposes, over. The results have been calculated and the final grades released. Well, all apart from the networking course, but that's something of a special case, having to be sent abroad to be marked. I've spent almost my entire day getting these sorted, confirmed and then uploaded into the dreaded WebCT. On Monday I can go into work and start dealing with the mountain of other paperwork that has built up over the last month.

While not at work I've been doing a little experimentation. Now that I've got a working armour tester I've been testing a variety of fabrics in a number of layers, and have come to the conclusion that we've been dramatically over-armouring our fencing garb. One layer of polycotton fails the armour test but two pass. One layer of heavier brocade fails the test but two pass. One layer of polycotton on one of brocade passes. In each case there is no damage to the upper layer. This makes me wonder if the main strength comes from the layering effect rather than the raw strength of the fabric.

After these investigations last night I enjoyed a cathartic DVD viewing - Children of Men. I'd picked it up a couple of months ago while passing through the UK and hadn't got around to watching it yet. Wow. I can see why it won Oscar nominations for cinematography and editing - believe me, it takes something pretty impressive to make me notice these things. I only bought it in the first place because, like , I'm also a sucker for end-of-the-world/post-apocalyptic (and future-dystopic) films, so I was very pleasantly surprised at the quality. It's probably set back my requirement for a cathartic Edge of Darkness viewing for a couple of months.

Now I'm off to make a gala pie. I shall report back on this tomorrow... unless it's a complete disaster, that is.

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I have just been shopping on a building site.

The local shopping centre, Glerátorg, is undergoing a significant extension. Yes, that's a polite way of putting it. The centre has been extended to almost double its size, but in doing so they have created a single building with two completely independent and unconnected sections.

So if you want to go to Rúmfatalagerinn you have to go up to the top car park - currently a flat piece of partially-tarmacked ground which is currently undergoing work installing things like lights and pavements. You can't get into the store via its main entrance, you have to use the side door which is normally the emergency exit. It has been like this since the end of March, when the new store opened to loud fanfares and a five-year-old falling several metres off the escalator onto a solid floor (it lived, but its grandparents shouldn't have let it wander off to play on its own in the first place). This is the Icelandic equivalent of Woolworths, so it's a very useful store, now made considerable less inviting by the palaver of getting to it.

The other half of the building - where Rúmfatalagerinn used to be before it moved to newer and larger premises - is also undergoing work. The middle-of-the-road supermarket, Netto, is being restructured even as you shop. It took me quite some time to find the UHT milk (G-mjólk) today, as it's no longer with the rest of the milk. Various other things have moved, and they're planning a two-day shutdown next week in order to (I hope!) finish everything off. At present, then, you're manoeuvering around workmen, power cables and ladders.

I'm presuming - hoping? - that once they finish the work that the car park will be larger and that you'll be able to go from one part of the building to the other without having to take a long detour outside through a building site. If not, I'm sure that it will cost both sets of stores in terms of custom. After all, when the two were in the same building I'd often pop into one when I was shopping in the other, and I suspect that other folks did the same. Right now it's too much of a faff.

Yes, it's been one of those days. :S

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Spring has definitely arrived.

It's not the fact that I can see the grass once more that tells me this, but that the Glerá - the small river that I have to cross to get to or from work every day - is in full spate that really signifies that winter has finally come to an end. The river brings meltwater down from the glaciers behind the town and this brings with it large amounts of silt. At present the Glerá is threatening to burst its banks with swift-flowing café-au-lait water.

It's also quite warm and sunny, although we're due more heavy weather at the weekend. I can live with that - I wasn't exactly planning to start sunbathing on the balcony. :)

I have at last finished my pile of marking - hurrah!. It's now just a case of finalising the necessary paperwork so that we can release the results on Friday.
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Anyone want to swap shoulders?

I have a left shoulder that works adequately so long as you don't try fencing with it - I use it for the sword style of fencing, but I suspect that the hammer and nails variety might also cause problems. I'd like to swap it for one that can fence but can't, for instance, do heavy weightlifting. As I type this I'm sitting with a wheatgerm pillow running over my shoulderblade in an attempt to dull the muscle pain.

All of this from a couple of hours leading drills and marshalling, not actually fencing properly, I'm beginning to get the feeling that I'm going to end up doing the minimal amount of fencing possible to keep my authorisations and to focus on the teaching and marshalling side. This is rather frustrating as I enjoy fencing.

Work is... progressing. I got a fair chunk of the marking done today. Hopefully I'll kill the rest tomorrow. I'd better, as I have a meeting in Reykjavík on Thursday and many meetings (including the examiners meeting) on Friday. After that, though, things should lighten up a bit. I am so looking forward to that. :)
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Again, not as much as I'd hoped for.

My oomph, which was looking for an exit yesterday, today made it not only out of the door but out of the building. I therefore have quite a large pile of marking left; I only managed to mark the several inches of group project deliverables and a single exam paper before running out of energy. I did, however, manage to get the skirt made (although I now need to go and buy some elastic) and have the tournament prize ready to embroider.

Yes, there is a definite lack of oomph around here. Donations gladly accepted.
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Although not as much as I'd like.

I now have all twenty event tokens (sans pins) and a working armour tester. I don't, however, have a bellydancing skirt, a prize for the rapier tournament at Revel (although I now have fabric and pattern), or a large pile of marked exam scripts.

Today's distractions included ice cream out at Hrafnagil with O and E, and the second season of Primeval. Silly but fun. I keep having visions of Primeval/Torchwood crossovers. Thinking of which, I really should get around to watching the rest of the second season of Torchwood (having watched 2.1 while in Spain).

And then there's the Dr. Who matter. I haven't plucked up the courage to watch the latest season yet, given that I absolutely loathed The Runaway Bride. Loathed as in wanted to put my foot through the television screen. Perhaps a stiff gin would help.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot. We had a 2.8 earthquake centred 0.8km down and 2.8km away from Akureyri this afternoon. The house rumbled, I thought oh, an earthquake and carried on watching Planet Mechanics.
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I've actually managed to make some progress on my list of things to do this weekend.

This is quite a Big Thing, as most of the time at the weekends nowadays I just want to curl up and either sleep or escape into a book. So far this weekend, though, I've made the bodies of ten event tokens, I've cut out the pattern for my skirt, I've completed the payload section of a fencing armour tester and I've emptied and cleaned the fridge. No marking as of yet, but that will come tomorrow.

The event tokens, of which I've so far made ten, take about twelve minutes each, plus the time it'll take to stiffen them and add pins, which will probably take it up to about fifteen minutes each. It's a good thing that this is going to be a small event (I think I need to make another ten or twelve of the things) as they are a bit on the fiddly side and I don't think I'd want to have to make forty or eighty of the things.

The plan for tomorrow, then, is to finish the tokens, finish the skirt, finish the armour tester and do some marking. If I can get that done I'll be very pleased with myself. If I don't... well, I do have Monday to catch up.
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That was the wry comment of one of my colleagues as I passed him in the blizzard this afternoon.

I'd just started thinking that we'd seen the end of the snow when it started again this morning. I noticed it as I sat in the first of this morning's meetings - at which point one thing led to another and I got nothing done that I'd planned, and have ended up bringing all of my marking home to do over the weekend. Ah well, I suppose this means that I have a wider range of coloured pens to choose from.

Plan for the weekend: Mark stuff, make event tokens for Revel, make prize for A&S competition, make compilation DVD from J's fencing mp4s, do some sorting and tidying, make bellydancing skirt.

It's a good thing it's a long weekend. :)
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These triangular pens are my current writing implement of choice.

I first came across them a couple of years ago as a mixed pack of biro, felt-tip, pencil and highlighter in a hard case that folds back upon itself to form a stand. Since then I've picked up (all in Asda) the fourpacks of biros, highlighters and felt-tips.

But it doesn't stop there. As well as fourpacks of the felt-tips - or, more correctly, the triplus fineliner - also comes in multicolour packs of ten and even twenty. Now I'm a sucker for a nice set of coloured pens, so I've picked up both sets on trips back to the UK. The larger set is sitting on my bookshelf ready to leap into action whenever I feel the need to do technicolour diagrams, while the tenpack sits on my office desk.

Until today I hadn't had a good excuse to use them. Yes, I could have started creating vibrant mind maps in faculty council meetings but that would be overkill. Instead I broke them out for marking exam scripts. I started out conventionally enough, choosing the green pen for the Java exam scripts. Then I got to the architecture essays and went completely mad using the orange pen for the first question and the pink pen for the second. What a wild and rebellious - or do I mean crazy? - thing to do, to mark things in orange and pink. I almost feel quite faint at the thought.

Tomorrow I have Java courseworks to mark, and I might just go for the lime green. Or should I save the green for the architecture exam scripts and opt for Java coffee brown? Decisions, decisions. :)
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Milestones of the day:

Today I marked the first of my two exam papers. The pleasing points about this were that a) everyone who sat the exam passed it, b) the resulting grades produced a nice normal curve (very, very important!), and c) the paper was described as tough by its internal moderator (who used to teach this module) but still produced these results. The students have said that this module was significantly more difficult than the first programming module so I think that we can all feel quite satisfied this evening. I've now just got to finish marking the coursework to go with it and that will be one module completely out of the way. Just in time for me to get the papers from tomorrow's architecture exam.

Milestone the second - I de-iced the freezer. My freezer is more a large icebox than a true freezer, and its limited internal space was being encroached upon by thick layers of ice. I think I've taken about 1000 cubic centimetres of ice off the inner surfaces (with the aid of a strong knife and a few good thumps). It's astounding how much more space there is in there now... and I found two blocks of frozen cheddar that I had forgotten were in the freezer to start with. One of these is now defrosting and I look forward to cheese toasties with a bit of bit to them this weekend.
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It's been a very nondescript day.

I went into work, I did some admin stuff, I marked a pile of computer architecture coursework, I collected my first set of exam papers to mark, I found myself booked in for a meeting in Reykjavík next week, and I did a fencing class.

It would probably help if the head cold I had last week hadn't settled down onto my chest. This did cramp my fencing a bit, as I'd planned to do some serious sparring but I just wheezed uncomfortably every time I tried to do anything energetic. I hate it when these colds drop to my chest - they seem to sit there for weeks and weeks.

Bah.
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I have a new toy.

When I was coming through Stansted on my way back from Valencia I indulged myself in a new toy - an Eee. It's the black 4G model (I already have a spare 4G flash card which has now been dedicated to the beastie) with Linux. The assistant was greatly amused when I told him that I'd take any colour but pink - I don't do pink. Actually I wasn't that keen on white either, but I'd have settled for the blue or green versions.

Why, you might ask, do I need an Eee? Well, I've had a handbag problem for a while: my handbag is not large enough to take my MacBook. Now this may sound a little crazy, but I like being able to carry a network-capable computer in my handbag. My Palm does the job in theory, but browsing on the Palm is an exercise in futility because so few sites have mobile layouts and the scrolling issue is a serious pain.

I know that the more normal thing would be to buy a bigger handbag. I have tried. Unfortunately I've seen nothing more complex than a simple shopping bag anywhere that isn't a designer store (and therefore ludicrously expensive). The only practical solution, then, was not to get a handbag to fit my computer, but rather to get a computer to fit my handbag.

Excellent excuse, isn't it? :)
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I've just had a number of hours playing with iPhoto and iWeb dealing with the photos from Valencia.

While I appreciate the fact that I can process things in iPhoto, transfer them across to iWeb and then upload them to .Mac relatively easily and, assuming that I have the necessary uploaders, upload them to other places as well, I must say that I still find Google's Picassa much easier (and faster) to work with. In spite of this (and not without a couple of muttered curses) I've now managed to upload 99 photos to Facebook. Why 99? Because iPhoto won't let you transfer more than 99 to iWeb and I'd originally planned to use that to generate web pages etc.

So, on to Valencia. After the chaos and stress of the India trip, this trip was much, much smoother - once I'd visited the travel agent to sort out the name issue and ignoring the fact that the taxi driver ripped me off on the way to the hotel (I later found that several of the other delegates had that particular problem, so I suspect it may be an endemic issue).

The hotel - the Beatriz Rey Don Jaime - was clearly a business hotel and was very comfortable. The restaurant was small with a rather limited menu, but I suspect that most people go out to eat rather than eat in. I generally eat in on my first evening anywhere just because it's easier after a long day's travel. Breakfast was good, though, with both continental and cooked options.

As the hotel is one of a cluster of hotels on the same block, there's a taxi rank just over the road from the main door. This was quite useful, as it made life much easier for the trips out to the university. The event was held at the Polytechnical University, which is based on its own large modern campus. The campus is beautiful; lots of open spaces, sports facilities and environmental artwork. One of the locals told me that the previous rector had a policy whereby every time the staff went on strike for the day he used the money they forfeited in pay to buy a new piece of sculpture for the campus.

Once we'd finished our peregrinations for the day the summit organisers had laid on a tour of the city centre for us. This started on a bus to go from the university into town, then turned into a guided walk around the old city. I managed to get a number of photos of more municipal art - I was impressed by the amount of this - architectural detail, the bullring and the odd historical monument. The bus disgorged us outside the silk market, a beautiful renaissance hall in which silk (then the mainstay of the Valencian economy) was traded.



We then wandered past a couple more churches to the central square and the cathedral. The cathedral is a curious building, having been built over an extensive period of time and hence in quite a range of styles. The different doorways, for instance, come in Baroque, Romanesque and Gothic depending upon which part of the building you're facing:



Although I didn't get to go into the cathedral immediately I did pop back in later to have a quick look at the holy grail. Or, at least, at an agate cup which has been scientifically dated to the first century AD and is in a style common to many archeological finds from Judea in that period. Unfortunately the chapel was in use so I only got to look from the doorway, which means that I think I can say that I have seen it but haven't actually looked at it. It's the thing in the illuminated alcove:



There are a number of other interesting buildings in the city centre, but one that particularly interested me wasn't actually a building - it was the ruins of Roman Valencia. The city was originally built by the Romans as a retirement town for ex-legionaries. The remains of this settlement can be seen underneath a water-covered, glass-ceilinged area in one of the squares next to the cathedral:



That concluded the walking tour, after which I headed back to the hotel to batter my head cold into submission before the next day's presentations. A second tour was arranged for the next day, this time visiting the local national park, but the head cold got the better of me and I spent a fair chunk of the time between the end of the summit and the evening meal asleep.

I did, however, head out to the restaurant a couple of hours before dinner because the restaurant was at one end of the City of Arts and Sciences, the collection of striking avant-garde buildings I'd noticed on my way into the city form the airport. My plan was to locate the restaurant and then use it as a starting point for my wanderings around the other buildings.

The CAS is stunning. It looks, as I mentioned before, like something out of Logan's Run:



The science museum - the building with the overarching spur - looks very familiar. I'm sure I've seen something similar in a Jim Burns painting at some time. I walked down in the shaded section underneath the upper garden, next to what was a very inviting pool. It was very quiet and peaceful down there, probably because the museums had closed and so the only people there were just enjoying the architecture. I came back along the upper section, a set of open archways surmounting a garden:



It's a strange place, as the overhead arches provide a very strange tunnelling effect. There's also a small cafeteria - unfortunately closed when I was there, as I could have done with a nice cold drink by that point. It did amuse me, though, that this place obviously has another function; the Valencians are clearly operating a Rover farm:



By now the sun had dropped below the buildings on the western horizon and it was time to head back to the submarine restaurant at the Oceanographic for dinner. The restaurant is a little like an inside-out fish bowl; the fish swim round and round the edge but you're sitting on the inside watching them instead of the outside. In some ways it's a little distracting, as the movement of the fish does catch the eye:



I believe that the meal was quite tasty, but unfortunately my taste buds were still suffering from the head cold. We started eating at about 21:30 and finished dessert just after midnight - this is, I'm told, normal for dinner in Spain. Some folks then went off to find a bar or two, but I returned to the hotel for what was to prove my best night's sleep for a while.

The flight back was uneventful, although we had what is probably the best flying weather I've ever known. It was good enough to photograph the ground from the air right the way until we got in to northern France. The Pyrenees were particularly impressive:



It would certainly be nice to go back to Valencia at some point when I can dedicate a full couple of days to visiting things. My original intention was to do that on the Thursday morning before flying out, but it being May Day it was a national holiday and most things were closed. As it happens, we have an Erasmus exchange agreement with UPV, so I might just be able to swing another visit, I'll have to see how everything goes next year.

The whole photoset can be found here on LJ or here on .mac.

Labels: Valencia

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I'm just back from a very interesting meal.

A couple of days ago was R's birthday, which was a good excuse to go out for a meal. Rather than go to any of the normal locations we went out to a restaurant in the middle of nowhere in the valley to the west. The restaurant gets around its location issue by having a large minibus which it uses to provide a pick-up and return service for its clients - an excellent idea in my view.

We opted for the full five courses:

• Smoked lamb with capers
  
• Lobster tails in garlic
  
• Saltfish mousse in filo pastry with parmesan and basil
  
• Beef with flambéd mushrooms
  
• Rye bread and chocolate mousse

This menu was a curious mix of traditional Icelandic food with international accents. The saltfish was... salty... but the rye bread and chocolate mousse was very tasty. There was also wine for some, although I opted for water on grounds of having already drunk quite a lot in Spain earlier in the week and also being pumped full of decongestants which would likely have made me feel rather sleepy if I'd added alcohol to the mix.

The post-meal party is still going on, but I need my recovery sleep. All the same, it's been a very good evening.
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I made it back to Akureyri without too many problems.

It did turn out, mind, that I had two seats booked on the flight heading north. I'm quite impressed by this, as I made the booking at the travel agency, so it should have been quite difficult to manage this.

It was also very pleasant to take the 11:15 flight rather than the 07:30 one. This meant that I had time to get up and have a relaxed breakfast before checking out, as opposed to the normal cursing of the alarm clock and then a somewhat frantic coffee and slice of bread and butter. Hotel Cabin is very good about early breakfasts - breakfast officially starts at 07:00, but as they have a lot of guests who get up for the 05:00 FlyBus they always have at least coffee and bread options from about 04:00.

I shared the flight up north with three football teams' worth of approximately-ten-year-olds. Fortunately they were very well behaved so I didn't have to kill any of them. I'm presuming that there's a big sporting thing going on this weekend of which I know nothing.

Still on a sporty theme, as I arrived back I realised that what I really needed was to loosen up my shoulder - in other words I needed a swim. I haven't been swimming for almost four months, I've been so busy at work. It was very pleasant to sink into the warm waters of the pool, even though M and I skipped the hot pot as it was full of other people at the time. That's not really a problem there; the pool itself is hot enough to coax the muscles to relax.

And relaxing is the rest of my plan for the weekend. This will be good.
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